Talking to myself/reassuring myself at work re: “can’t you just read the meeting notes, you weirdo?”

  • Quick context → some meeting notes were shared with me, useful walkthrough of a part of the business that I don’t understand yet
  • So, I spent ~1 hour making a visual note out of the meeting notes, and then wrote this:

  • Talking to myself/reassuring myself at work re: “can’t you just read the meeting notes, you weirdo?”
  • Michele Chi is a cognitive scientist who developed the “ICAP” model for learning, which ranks learning models like this - I > C > A > P, where:
    • I = interactive, C = constructive, A = active, P = passive
  • Basically, just reading meeting notes = passive, and doesn’t lead to much learning/retention
    • (Andy Matuschak calls this “transmissionism” in his “Books Don’t Work” post). The false premise of e.g. university education of like “I, the professor, will talk at you for 1-2 hours hours, thus transmitting the knowledge into your brain”
  • Basically, to make a visual note involves condensing, rearranging, re-ordering, etc. And you grapple with each sentence as you move it around, tidy it up, decide where it goes, etc
  • Tbf, I think if you were someone who already knew a bunch about [this part of the business], then just reading the meeting notes would be enough. But as someone who is still getting my head around this stuff, moving up the ICAP model to C, a constructive task, is the vibe, IMO